By Liz Shields (1998), Edited and Updated by Lewis Loflin (2025)
In recent years, Christian fundamentalist activity in America has surged. They've pushed legislation to reintroduce prayer in public schools, teach biblical creation in science classes, and challenge the constitutional separation of church and state (Tiffin 209).
These efforts mark the latest chapter in Christian fundamentalism's long history of opposing mainstream progressive views. Today's fundamentalism has split into three main groups - flat-earthers, geocentrists, and creationists - each sharing some beliefs but clashing on specifics. As fundamentalists influence American politics and social issues, understanding their historical roots and beliefs is crucial.
The first major clash between science and Christianity centered on the Earth's shape (Godfrey 289). Flat-earthers, relying on a literal interpretation of the Bible, insist the Earth is a flat, circular plane with the North Pole at the center and ice walls at the southern edges (Godfrey 290). They claim the sun, moon, and planets circle 600 miles above, with rising and setting being optical illusions due to "atmospheric refraction and zetetic law of perspective" (290).
Science debunked these ideas long ago. Eratosthenes and Hipparchus in ancient Greece calculated the Earth's spherical shape. While the Flat Earth Society lingers with a tiny following, the notion largely died out centuries ago.
Geocentrists and creationists, despite also believing in the Bible's inerrancy, reject flat-earth ideas. Amusingly, creationists view flat-earthers as ultra-conservative and avoid association (Godfrey 291). Geocentrists, seen as more moderate by creationists, hold that the Earth sits at the universe's center, with everything revolving around it - a literal take on scripture.
Copernicus and Galileo disproved this, establishing the heliocentric model. Overwhelming evidence sidelined geocentrism, though some fundamentalists still cling to it, hovering on the edge of respectability among creationists (Godfrey 292). Tensions persist between these groups over scriptural interpretations.
Creationists, often self-styled as "creation scientists," are the most modern of the three. They see the Bible - specifically the King James Version - as the only valid scientific document. All science must conform to their interpretations (Godfrey 294). They reject a flat Earth and geocentrism but uphold a special creation, a young Earth, and the Noachian flood as literal events.
Unlike the other ideologies, creationism has endured by adopting pseudoscientific methods to claim legitimacy. They often dismiss conflicting science - like evolution - as flawed or misleading, sometimes labeling it "demonic" in their rhetoric. This adaptability has kept them relevant, unlike their flat-earth and geocentric counterparts.
All three groups - flat-earthers, geocentrists, and creationists - share a deep mistrust of science and modernism, earning the "fundamentalist" label. Their core beliefs in the Bible's inerrancy, special creation, a young Earth, and the Noachian flood solidified after Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 (Godfrey 287). Since then, they've split into distinct camps, with creationists surviving by mimicking scientific standards while rejecting evidence that contradicts scripture.
Their rigid view - that scientific evidence must fit holy scripture - puts them at odds with the scientific community and even mainstream Christianity (Godfrey 293). Ironically, while all three seek comfort in a literal Bible, their interpretations differ, locking them into a black-and-white worldview that sees science and progress as illusions.
Godfrey, Laurie R. Scientists Confront Creationism. New York: Norton & Company, 1983.
Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World. New York: Ballantine, 1996.
Tiffin, Lee. Creationism's Upside-Down Pyramid: How Science Refutes Fundamentalism. New York: Prometheus Books, 1994.
Acknowledgment: I'd like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me draft and refine this article. The final edits and perspective are my own.
